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I'm selling books directly again. The URL of the store can be found here: https://aalbc.com/store/ What makes the store viable again. First I have a group of people, the Go On Girl! Book Club who are committed to buying books, on their reading list, from Black owned, independent, bookstores. More importantly they recognize that I can not sell books at a loss they way "The Big A" can. But the are willing to do patronize AALBC, because they recognize that we need independent booksellers. Now I can offer Go On Girl! a decent dea deal, free shipping and in the most cases no sales tax (I operate out of FL). I also give a discount for bigger orders and I have committed to contributing 1/2 of my profits to their scholarship fund! It is win-win-win! I also sell @David Covin's upcoming title Raisins in Milk. David is selling his book for $10 ($5 off the regular price) to book clubs who buy his book before the June 1st publication date. Of course more books will be added along the way and alliances, partnership, and more creative strategies are developed. Thoughts?

The historical context is important and fascinating, but it is also very sad. Generations of people lives have been crushed as a result of these policies.

In December of 1946, war veterans faced a national housing shortage, President Harry S. Truman issued a statement that turned into a legislative policy. He emphasized the importance of his program and called on Congress to focus on the demands of large cities, and to establish positive incentives for the investment of billions of dollars in large-scale rental housing projects. Few Blacks, compared to White veterans, returned with no hope of shelter. Even with the "GI Bill," few had savings for downpayments. The racial attitudes of the FHA and its effect on minorities, namely Blacks, are more complex and the agency’s bias against these groups cannot be dismissed. The literature on this bias is extensive. Robert Self, in his American Babylon, said that postwar state intervention in the housing market by the FHA and other federal agencies “made financing single-family homes more profitable to lenders (I REPEAT, LENDERS!), more accessible to white buyers, and virtually unobtainable for African Americans. The FHA’s sanctioning of racially restrictive covenants for homebuyers in its early years did constitute indisputable discrimination that hurt potential black homebuyers, though it is difficult to know how much the FHA mimicked prevailing real estate practices and how much it influenced them. Despite claims that federal subsidies created the modern suburban landscape, the government’s most important instrument for reshaping the housing market pushed against it. Finally, to be sure, Truman was behind the 1947 war that supported Israel invasion to Palestine for their land which was spearheaded by covert actions Louis Brandeis who went on to become the U.S. Supreme Court Justice. That tidbit if background is important to understand the mentalities of those behind Federal Housing Project programs. And let’s not forget Raymond M. Foley the housing commissioner of that time; a staunch opponent of Civil Rights, some even believe Foley was KKK affiliated; though he was a sociologist. None of this is to infer that FH Projects serve no purpose or ruined by lack of maintenance; it is to suggest that the U.S. knew exactly what would happen, drugs, crime running wild, teen pregnancies, a group subversive policy, and advance agendas such as the 'hidden curriculum' etc. We are the animals of the man make URBAN JUNGLE. @Pioneer1: Please don't confuse "surely you can do better than that" for any part of your commentary as rational!

I witness the turn in the projects in the 60's when they were nice places to live. Sure the mentality of the people is one problem. I'm not even talking about the majority of people -- who are decent folk, but a large enough minority of people who are completely ghetto and destroy the entire community for everyone. They throw garbage one the ground because they don;t know better or care. Nowadays folks carry their household garbage and dump i front of the building rather than placing it in the receptacle inside the building designed to take it. The blast music, urinate in the elevator, break the locks and intercom when ever they are installed on the front doors. Still the builds and the are terribly maintained and I image some people behave like animals because they are treated like animals. Tearing down the projects would probably be worse for many people because there are simply no better options for many, There are people trying to get appartements the PJ's. Nowadays when folks leave the the projects they leave the city altogether.

@Queen X: What we are witnessing, I think, is desperate Black brothers doing all they can do, or all they think they can do to assimilate, blend in; stand out for survival. But stupidity and desperation always lead to disaster. It's the human way, you know? Even if they don't read Black history, it doesn't matter because they live the Black life but ignore it for what they believe is a better life. As I've alluded to in other posts on this site, we've traded our search for a better life in exchange for material wealth, consumerism. maybe that's the true beast everybody's talking about. Which may or may not be a bad thing. Though it certainly has distracted us from something more important.